Unashamed (14 page)

“What the fuck do you want, Aaron?” I angrily said through my teeth as he stood in the hallway.

“Shut up, we need to talk.” He stepped forward in an attempt to grant himself access to my room. I pushed the door closed, but his foot had made it a few inches across the threshold, which was the only reason it actually stopped short from slamming in his face.

“No, we don’t. I’m going to bed. Move your foot.”

“Why are you being a bitch? Just talk…let me in.” He blinked blankly and waited.

With seething disgust I released the pressure on the door and turned to sit on the corner of the hotel bed. “What?” I pressed both hands into the mattress and straightened my elbows.

“What’s your problem?” He gently shut the door behind him.

“I fucking hate you, Aaron. You are a prick.” With arms crossed, I stood to meet him at eye level, so he could see how much he disgusted me. “I’m not sleeping with you again. I have lost my mother fucking mind. I’m married, I can’t stand you, and I have no idea why I did that.”

“Good.” Aaron was very matter-of-fact. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about.”

“Well, good for you. Get the hell out of my room,” I directed.

“Jesus, I’m not a total dick head. You must like me a little to sleep with me.”

“It’s called being lonely, Aaron. That’s all that was. Are you done?” I cocked my head to the side and placed both hands on my hips.

“Why did you sleep with me?” His demeanor changed and I believe Asshole Aaron left his own body. What remained was a nicer, sensitive version.

My tone softened to accommodate the new person standing before me. “I honestly don’t know. Why do you put on such a front?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a defense.”

“You hurt people, Aaron, with your words and your tantrums. Get it together, man. One of these days, you are going to step to the wrong person, and they will fuck you up, no questions asked.”

“I know. You’re the only one that tells me this shit. I didn’t think it was this bad.”

“It’s that bad, man. I can’t stand your ass, but I know there is a good person in there somewhere.” I pushed my index finger into his pectoral muscle.

Aaron smirked. “I can’t stand you, either. All right, sorry to bother you. I am leaving. Can I get a hug?” He held his arms open and looked at me with sad puppy eyes.

I reluctantly gave Aaron a hug, which turned into sex. Immediately afterward we argued. He called me a cunt after the belt I threw cut his face. I wished many morbid deaths to come his way, but we never, ever, did that again.

Natalia’s attempts to cheer me up became few. The stress of the show, long hours, bus rides, unfamiliar bug-ridden hotels, transportation breakdowns, and the accidents months before had everyone on edge. We were exhausted. When Natalia ,aka “skank-honeia,” had the time to engage in happy conversation, I took it for more than it was worth. Maybe that’s why she didn’t talk to me as much. My belief was there was something going on between us that we had to hide. So, I dismissed her coldness as some sort of lovers’ spat that was one-hundred-percent nonexistent to her mind. It wasn’t until after September of 2001, when the Twin Towers of New York fell, that she began talking to me regularly.

Our tour continued, but once we arrived at our new venue, we were on lockdown until further notice. Luckily for us, the venue was the Presidio of Monterey in California. What a fantastic place to be on lockdown for an unknown length of time, minus the shitty circumstances.

Our accommodations were three blocks uphill from the docks where seals could be heard barking at night. I’m sure, with the weather as perfect as it was for that time of year, the docks were a busy place most days, but it was exceptionally quiet after 9/11.

There were no people walking the docks, no boats and their horns, no cars looking for parking or pedestrians trying to find their way. All of the novelty shops on the boardwalk were locked up with shades drawn. The colorful pinwheels outside of some of the little kiosks, which would have been desired by visiting children, spun in the wind. Rainbow streamers blew and flapped in the direction of the water that gently licked the base of the dock. The charming, warm place was sad and empty. People vacated every inch of the little town, either out of respect or fear.

Natalia and I ignored our lockdown order and snuck out one midafternoon to see the town in search for a place to eat. We walked for what seemed like two hours to find a place that was actually open. Luckily, it was a sushi restaurant, which we had grown accustomed to finding at each venue with a scheduled extended stay.

On the exceptionally long walk through winding uphill roads, we tried to talk about something other than the reality of what could happen to us as soldiers in the army. We actually started smiling and laughing at ourselves, something that seemed taboo in the wake of 9/11, when the alarms from the fallen firefighters were beginning to fade forever.

The possibility of being pulled off of the tour to be soldiers-in-combat weighed heavily on each cast member from the moment we became aware of the situation. It had been for days; laughter seemed a forbidden fruit. But we did and it felt so good, we were actually giddy with it.

The restaurant was more upscale, but they let us in with our shorts and sneakers because it was empty. The waiter walked us to our table, a huge crescent-shaped booth meant for a large family. We scooted in from one side, shimmying our butts over the fake leather to the inner most bend of the table, giggling all the way. Natalia sat to my left but moved close enough for our arms to touch. The unfamiliar surroundings, the ice water, and the absence of people made everything cold.

Natalia inched closer to me. We snapped a few photos of the momentous occasion. We talked and shared and laughed. Above us, traditional high-pitched pangs of mandolins and flutes played from a stereo system hidden in the ceiling. From the kitchen, a television, turned to the lowest setting, hummed the latest devastation from New York.

Trying to regain normalcy and happiness in the moments we shared was futile. I read into unintentional flirtation and was too comfortable. During a fit of laughter, my hand eventually rested on her knee. There were no attempts to move it or lean in for a kiss. Simply removing my hand would have prevented what happened next. In one unexpected, swift motion Natalia slapped my hand off of her knee as she attempted to muffle a shout, “
Don’t
touch me in public!”

She looked left and right to see if anyone had seen my indiscretion. I gently placed my hands in my lap and sunk into the booth. We didn’t linger on the subject; we moved on as if my behavior was that of a misbehaving child who foolishly cursed and was reprimanded. Immediately, she punished me and forgave the incident. By the time we left, that small moment in time had passed. Forgotten, like so many other small moments in a day.

Of course, my cache of rejections was growing. I harbored those words in the back of my brain with the others: “Don’t call me again. I’m
not
gay!” “You had your chance.” “I’m sorry, but I am really into Rick.” Natalia hurt me as if I had never met a girl like her before. I was becoming sort of a connoisseur at this old hat.

Edwyn Collins, British indie musician, hit the nail on the head with his lyrics to “A Girl Like You.” Collins’s song is the perfect background for how my rejection memories make me feel. The fantastic late sixties-ish percussion with seventies electric guitar rock riffs blend for a powerful, gritty heartbeat under his voice, which is reminiscent of early David Bowie and Bob Dylan, if they were lovers and produced a child. His voice is “sloshy and dry,” like he chain smokes in shitty basement bars after a few shots of whiskey.

You give me just a taste so I want more.
Now my hands are bleeding and my knees are raw.
’Cuz now you got me crawlin’, crawlin’ on the floor.
And I’ve never known a girl like you before.

It makes me want to hunt these women down and blast it on the street from my car in retribution. There’s a lot of pleasure in thinking of opening my car doors and waiting for them to come out of their homes to inspect the cause of the riffraff. Once they realized it was me in a leather jacket, black raccoon eyeliner, and punk hair, I would give them a double fuck-you-flip-off with motorcycle-gloved hands, fingertips exposed, of course, because that looks super bad ass when you are driving around in your…Honda? It makes sense in my fuck-you fantasy, so work with me here. Anyway, they would open their screen doors to ask, “Emma, is that you?”

As I would stand next to my Honda with fingerless motorcycle gloves, the stereo would blast his song to disturb their suburban neighborhoods. Picture me finishing the last burning puff of my smoke and flicking it on their carefully manicured lawn, just at the electric guitar peak of Collins’s song. The idea of littering gives me so much internal rest.

Except with Rachel. For her, I would produce a cigarette
and
lighter to smoke while the music annoyed wholesome families in their suburban oasis. She would run to me, having never aged past eighteen, wrap her arms around me, and seductively inhale the smoke from my mouth, ending it with gentle licks to my lips. And, as my head would swim and everything moved in slow motion, Edwyn would scream with real intensity:

You’ve made me acknowledge the devil in me.
I hope to God I’m talkin’ metaphorically.
Hope that I’m talkin’ allegorically.
Know that I’m talkin’ about the way I feel.
And I’ve never known a girl like you before.

I would separate the front of Rachel’s robe and slide my partially exposed fingers in her right there in front of God, neighbors, and husband watching from the kitchen window with a coffee cup in his hand.

Never, never, never, never.
Never known a girl like you before.

I would make her lick my fingers before I’d sit in the driver seat, lighting another smoke before driving off.

See what happens when one’s allegedly forgotten moments of rejection haunt them for over a decade? Someone save me. I need Jesus.

Chapter 10

After leaving the Soldier Show early due to knee injuries, Natalia sent two postcards and a letter telling me of her snorkeling adventures in Guam and how much she missed me. It was over, but she certainly sparked some repressed burning desire in me because shortly after my return to Douglas in Germany, I began to complain about the need for a woman in my life.

While folding clothes on the bed, Doug asked why I was whining. “What the hell is wrong with you?” were his exact words.

“I don’t know,” I said, drawing the last word out like I was a cranky, hungry four-year-old as I slumped over the bed, facedown into the linen and freshly dried clothing.

“Well, stop it. Are you going to start your period?”

“No, I think I need a girlfriend,” I corrected him with my face still smashed into the comforter. My statement was muffled, but he knew what I was trying to say.

“So, you are whining about it? Just go get one.” Doug made it sound terribly simple as he folded a sweater using his chin to hold the fabric.

I straightened from my slumped position, face now hot with blood. I could feel my flushed cheeks cool again as I stood erect and slurped drool back into my mouth. “I feel like I’m missing something in my life.” I balled a pair of socks and threw boxers on his pile. He was particular about his folded clothing, so the “his” and “hers” fold pile had become the norm. “I need a woman in my life.”

“So, go get one,” he reiterated, then methodically picked up the balled socks and set them next to another pair that would later become a row.

“What are you going to do? Sit at home with your thumb up your ass while I’m on a date with my girlfriend?” I folded a pair of jeans and placed them in my drawer.

He giggled as he tossed a pair of his old boxers, which I had taken over as my underwear on the top of my pile. “Sure, why not?”

“Right. I’m married. That’s ridiculous, I can’t do that.” I walked back to the bed and pretended to kick dirt on the tiled floor with my head slumped.

He giggled again as he adjusted his row of socks. “Whatever you want. As long as you are happy, I don’t care what you do.”

Continuing the childish routine, I bounced up and down to emphasize my point. “I need a woman.” I stomped around in an irritable, frustrated attempt for attention before throwing myself face down on the bed again. My muffled whines made Doug snicker.

“I need pussy.” I slobbered into the comforter.

Doug laughed as he poked me in the ass with a quick jab of his index finger. “I do, too,” he remarked.

Life went back to normal after returning from the Soldier Show. My six-year tour in the army was over, and it was time to become a civilian—correction, a proud veteran. We moved to my sister’s town in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland and rented a really nice renovated duplex up the road from her place. While working as a graphic designer at a local print shop that paid eighteen dollars an hour, Doug applied to colleges in the area to get his masters in psychology. We were on our way to beginning our happily ever after. We were miserable.

Let’s talk about this for a second. Ohio sucks. Fuck the Buckeye State. The perfectly manicured lawns and one-tree-per-front-yard-with-a-ceramic-goose-near-the-bushes makes me sick. The cross-stitched “Home Sweet Home” placards in the front windows and soccer-mom sports utility vehicles in the driveways are enough to make me stab myself in the eye with a hot french fry. Although the town we lived in was more trendy and youthful, it still reeked of fratboy-gone-dad, if you know what I mean.

The Cleveland Stadium was about a ten-minute drive without traffic from my front door. Our peaceful residential street would have cleared during a game had we stayed long enough to witness it. We moved to Vegas before we ever settled. Thank God, Doug’s brother, Rico, talked some motivation into us; otherwise, I would be wearing an eye patch with a fake diamond in the center and constantly explaining the french fry accident to fat housewives.

Rico, who got most of the Spanish genes but really looked Turkish, was a man who transcended macho. He was hyper-masculine, vulgar, bold, and honest to the core. He was a stocky well-built guy with one of those indented butt chins. He traveled more than any businessperson I have ever known, so his fashion influences were mostly European and very flashy. He had been called a faggot because he waxed every two weeks, and a pimp because he changed his phone number more often than anyone could keep up with. Doug called him whatever he wanted to in Spanish. I just called him Rico, or Fucker, depending on my mood. Despite his shady life, his tactless monologues, which were many through the years, were always right. He was the king of offensive common sense. It is Rico who can be credited with our conversion from Midwestern misery to Vegas history.

During his one and only visit to the great Buckeye State, Rico gave us one such crude speech. He leaned against the doorway of the dining room as we sat at our table, sipping cocktails. Ever the metrosexual, Rico crossed his left foot over his right, forcing a hand in the pocket of his super tight fashionable jeans—which, by the way, were adorned with strategically placed bedazzling beads.

“They’re not fucking women’s jeans, Leva. Get a fucking clue,” he scolded us earlier when Douglas teased about the sparkles on his pants. “These are from fucking Italy, pinche. I paid three hundred dollars for these.”

Doug’s high-pitched laugh, complete with banging on the table, drowned out my comment about his sassy pants. Rico was confidently smug. “Bitches like to see my cock.” Then he said some vulgar shit in Spanish before telling us that we needed to get out of this corn-fed state.

Smartly he discussed schooling options at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas for Doug to include pros and cons of several schools Doug had already been accepted to. His sales pitch turned to enticing me with all of the possibilities for graphics positions in a city where graphics and marketing dominate in neon signs. When he pieced everything together, it all made sense, including the plethora of pussy that apparently came his way in droves.

We were sold; Doug told him we would leave in a month after my thumbs up. Rico, always living for the moment, jumped in, “Man, fuck a month. Don’t be pussies. I leave in two days. I’ll pay for your ticket. You can stay with me, enroll in your fucking classes before the semester enrollment ends, and set up a place for Emma.”

Rico looked to me. “You can stay with your sister, right? Get all of this shit sent to Vegas when this Leva gets a place. There is nothing to wait for here. For what? The Children of the Corn to ass rape you on the way to Grandma’s house?”

With more vulgarity and disgust, Rico repeated his concern of getting ass raped on a farm in Spanish.
“Nadie me va a poner su verga en mi culo en medio de una granja! Pinche, Deliverance, y me cago en tu madre que si no!”

He continued, “I warn you, though, once you live in Vegas, no other city compares. I don’t give a fuck. You won’t be able to live anywhere else if you leave it, I promise.” He grabbed his genital area to adjust himself, then sat at the table with us to explain further.

What a deal closer! Rico could sell ice to an Eskimo. Well, to a pretty liberal one, if his language didn’t get him killed first. I tilted my head to the side and teased, “What exactly do you do for a living again?”

His response: “Chinga tu madre, I deliver fucking pizzas.”

Douglas left for Vegas two days later, and I paid for a storage company to get our stuff the next week. I stayed with my sister and waited for his green light to drive to the City of Sin. Being jobless has its perks, for a while, until you have watched all the reruns of Oprah and organized the canned goods in alphabetical order. Eventually my ritual included borrowing my sister’s work computer to surf the net and chat after she went to bed.

My favorite site was a gay connections chat room, which I frequented. One night, while I was up late typing, my sister walked into the living room to find me on the couch with her laptop, giggling at the screen. I jumped.

“What are you doing?” she asked as she rubbed her eyes, pushed long red hair behind her shoulder, and yawned.

“Chatting online.” I shifted the computer away from her. My heart was pounding with fear.

“With who?” She reached over and turned the laptop so she could read the screen without my consent.

I was shocked and embarrassed. “A girl in Youngstown.” I moved the laptop away from her again.

That’s when she realized it was a gay chat site and asked, “What are you doing there?” She knelt by the armrest of the couch to get a closer look and pointed to the word
gay
on the screen as she pushed it back so she could see it.

“I like girls,” I said, slightly defensive with a hint of humiliation.

Her face changed to bright-eyed awareness. “Oh my God, you’re a
muff diver?
Does Doug know?” She was dead serious as her jaw dropped in amazement.

I laughed hard at her face and her use of that term. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, but yes, he knows. I can’t believe you just said muff diver.” I tried to muffle my laughter as it was nearly three in the morning.

“Well, who’s the girl in Youngstown?” Sheepishly she asked with intense interest.

“I don’t know. I just started talking to her tonight. I think we are going to meet up tomorrow for coffee and maybe go out.”

“Oh my God, like a date?” She stood up from her crouched position to stretch.

“Yes, on a date.”

Her arm swung across the front of her chest as she pulled it tight with the opposite hand. She held it for second, then switched arms. As she pulled it, she noticed the computer I was using. “Oh my God, Emma, you are on my work computer. Here, use this one.” She pulled out another laptop hidden under some magazines. It was an older model, but it was also a laptop where gay dating sites could be accessed without the risk of being fired. “Okay, don’t stay up too late. I’m going to bed.” She crossed her arms, yawned, and returned down the dark hall to her bedroom, where she snuggled herself and went to sleep. That was it, total unconditional acceptance. My sister, whom I lovingly referred to as Beaner, until I realized it was offensive to Mexican–Americans when I was twelve, didn’t even flinch. She was officially cool in my book. Well, kind of; she will always be my dorky, redheaded, spectacle-wearing sister to me.

Supposedly, eighty percent of couples split or divorce after living in Las Vegas. The origins of this research are unknown, so don’t ask me, but it’s probably true. Vegas is known as the City of Sin for a reason. One cannot deny the history of the city ridden with crime, gambling, drugs, strippers and whores, exceptional wealth, and incumbent poverty. All of which, I seem to have experienced during my residency, but we are not to that part yet.

After moving, Douglas managed to land a job with a real estate company and was doing very well. I was working as a third-party collections agent. It wasn’t adding anything to the savings account, but we paid our bills. Doug worked late hours, learning state laws and putting together contracts. I was, well, a fucking collections agent with a headset in a five-by-five cubical. If you have ever been called by a collector, you know the familiar “This call is being monitored . . .” disclaimer, which we were required to say to each “client,” about eighty times a day.

Once again, we were miserable, but our relationship was rock solid. We went out, we shopped, we stayed in to watch movies, and we had dinner with his family. We were generally very happy. We even started paperwork to buy a house.

Then Douglas received his layoff notice with the unfortunate “new guy goes first” rule. The sad part was that the manager had just offered him a promotion over dudes who had been with the company for two years. I’m telling you: he is a smart little fucker. But always a forward thinker, he enrolled himself into the University of Nevada–Las Vegas the next day. He was much happier in a learning environment anyway. Doug is not one to enjoy grunt work, even if it involves paperwork.

Meanwhile, I was stuck wearing business casual clothing borrowed from my mother-in-law and listening to debtors threaten my life if I called their homes again. Excuse me; their cell phones, that they somehow maintained while claiming they were so broke. They spoke to me from the darkness.

Some of my coworkers had been in the collections business for years. I quit after the longest six months of my life and applied for a nanny job with a company just up the street from our apartment. I lied on my application so as to be placed with a family quicker. With a flick of my pen, my resume included a year and a half of experience working with a child afflicted with an attention deficit disorder. The company hired me a week later without a background check.

Every Monday, just as they instructed, I visited the office to see if they had placed me with a family. Every Monday, I was turned away. Unemployment is not fun, especially for the second time, so two months later and still unemployed, I bought my first pair of stripper shoes.

The bills were behind, the refrigerator was empty, and regular jobs wouldn’t have paid enough to keep us afloat anyway. Douglas was in school pulling a full schedule and mastering every subject. I volunteered to shake my ass with his blessing, which he granted the best way he knew how. “Bring Daddy some money. A bitch is broke.”